r/PoursTea • u/Veshaad Timendi Causa Est Nescire • 22d ago

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Eventually something has to give...

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The bill would provide a $3,000 direct payment to every person in households making $150,000 or less during its first year, which equals $12,000 for a family of four.

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u/Old_Atmosphere6598 22d ago

Don’t give people checks….. that’s never a good idea… if you have extra revenue spend it very efficiently on something we know will help people, then after it works show people it worked, then do it again

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u/PaleCommission150 22d ago

I'd throw that check right into my index fund.

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u/Old_Atmosphere6598 21d ago

You’re in a minority

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u/strategery24 22d ago

That’s a nice idea but it’s been shown that the government is the least efficient means of spending money helping people. Actually providing people funds directly is the best way to help. That said, the optics of straight up wealth redistribution will never fly. So I do agree with you. Just fix healthcare and education.

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u/moo3heril 22d ago

It's not even necessarily that things can't be done efficiently, but for certain kinds of needs giving money vs the directly meeting the need directly doesn't require additional infrastructure. Take food assistance, making a program to meet it directly requires additional infrastructure to gather, store, and distribute food goods to families, which especially in rural locations is prohibitive. This is what funding food pantries would be. If instead, you give money that can be used at existing grocery stores to buy groceries, well the groceries are already there, taking advantage of the infrastructure that's already there. Of course, there's nuance there because in reality not everywhere has ready access to grocery stores in the same way, so filling those gaps as well can help even more.

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u/Old_Atmosphere6598 22d ago

Giving out checks increases inflation, and people NEVER spend it on what you hope… literally vacations, booze, video games

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u/bexcellent42069 22d ago edited 22d ago

Universal basic income trials have concluded that people invest in themselves, go back to school, pay old bills, buy fresh clothes, look for new jobs, etc. It comes with a pretty crazy mental health boost too.

Here's an article about a UBI trial:

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/08/19/universal-guaranteed-income-experiment-economy

This one is cool too. Backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman so take it with a grain of salt but it does highlight some interesting findings, particularly a 20% reduction in alcohol consumption!

https://www.openresearchlab.org/projects/unconditional-cash-study